Somalia: Rare access to its US-funded ‘lightning’ commando brigade

It is just after five in the morning, and three pickup trucks – each bristling, like porcupines, with a dozen heavily armed soldiers – are tearing along a winding, sandy track in the dawn-grey wilderness of central Somalia.

The driver of the middle car, hunched forward over his wheel, changes down a gear to skid round a thorn bush, then flashes a smile and checks his wing-mirror to make sure none of his colleagues, feet dangling over the sides of the vehicle, have fallen off.

The commandos say al-Shabab fighters now do not want to take them on